(Seen at subpage.) Cf. [1]. Have you already joined mail:wiki-research-l? See also some links to a one place where you can find most of the "research"/analytics/statistics questions worked on by the community. If you need more pointers to the kind of things that compose the bulk of editors' experience and research, let me/us know. :) --Nemo 07:30, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

HI Nemo! Thanks for your note :) I am on the Design team and work closely with the Research team. I work with all the teams, to various degrees depending on what kind of qualitative design research they need. I am a design researcher - focusing on user research and strategic design research. So, I do a lot of usability testing, collaboration with design and product, as well as collaborating with the research team. When the quantitative researchers have questions about why things are happening or not, I can help them answer the question. THey will help me find a representative sample of a certain cohort of users and I will design a research methodology to better understand the motivations, goals, experiences, etc. of that group. THis will provide some hypotheses about the Why question that we then can do more quantitative experiments with. Right now I am trying to build the Design / Research page. It is different than the whole research team, and would like to organized my findings differently as they are related to specific design projects. I thought I made a sandbox page to play in and prototype and learn - as a way to build this page out so it is more usable and useful.. can't find it at the moment. Am not remembering what I called it. I looked in my list of contributions - still no sight of it. Might have made it on another wiki :|
--ARipstra (WMF) (talk) 21:58, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Hello, I was wondering... I often conduct hands-on editing workshops and sessions for Wikimedia Italia and many others do all over the world. When doing so, I notice and mentally note down many non-obvious obstacles the users encounter (often frustrating me more than themselves), but I have no systematic way to share them other than file enhancement requests and bugs. Would it be worthwhile to set up a page where editing trainers from all over the world would be invited to post their (unplanned) (in)usability tests? --Nemo 14:52, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your note. The kind of observational data you are describing is really valuable for understanding details of the buriers people encounter when attempting to edit / contribute, and also what works well for people. Observational data is much more valuable and right to the point than self reported data which comes through surveys, etc. Using both methods, along with usage data analytics on a larger scale is powerful information, and part of what guides product teams how to reduce or (hopefully) eliminate those buriers. Since the design research department at the Foundation is getting up and running now, we have plans to do some structured research about editing. (This contextual inquiry article needs a little updating, which is on my list to do, but does a pretty good job of describing the methodology in general terms.) So, along with this kind of research, I think it would be valuable to also gather the observations you and others collect during editing workshops and sessions. Would it be possible for you and I to meet and discuss a method to gather those observations in a structured and quantifiable way? I have done this kind of work many times, and have suggestions about what might work best for structured data collection. I am, of course, open to collaborate with you on what kind of data collection would work best for you (and others) in the field. Thanks for reaching out Nemo!! --ARipstra (WMF) (talk) 08:37, 8 October 2014 (UTC)ARipstra (WMF)

Workshops and training of all sorts happens independently everywhere in the world, so it's not really possible to "represent" everyone and make a specific proposal. The data collection could start on a simple wiki page and evolve from there, but it probably needs two features: 1) simple, 2) tidy and alive.

1) Simple means that I can record something I observed in 5 minutes or less, possibly during an event, or shortly after it: this won't be the main objective of the even, just an accessory. 2) Tidy means that someone feels responsible for archiving stuff acted upon etc., alive that one feels the contribution will actually go somewhere and be useful.

Now just typing without too much thought: for instance, this could be a page (or even a phabricator project) where I can enter a simple "story" as in the first paragraph of the bug I linked above; then someone would be there to comment and, if the issue seems relevant enough, add the thing to a list of issues to verify more scientifically. To kickstart the project, you could say that in N months from now you'll make a usability session with a dozen users (or whatever thing is "scientifically suitable") in order to verify some usability suspicions, and that in N-1 months from now you'll need to have a list of hypotheses to verify, so you ask everyone to submit their observations, among which they'll be chosen. --Nemo 11:29, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Hello Abbey! I reverted your successful test for a silly reason - that page on this site is managed via Liquid Threads, so the messages aren't actually posted there... well, it's a mess :p but the good thing is, LT is not really a thing anywhere else, so whatever you were doing, it works! (on "common", "regular" talk pages at least). Happy New Year to you too! --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 20:34, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Dear m(r)s Ripstra,

You sent me the survey twice. Bug or feature to make sure it really arrives at the right address? BTW: You have Frisian or Dutch roots? — Preceding unsigned comment added by ZeaForUs (talk • contribs) 00:25, 15 January 2015‎

Hello, Not sure who you are since you didn't sign. Sorry we sent the survey to you twice. This was not intentional, and are seeing that several people got it twice. We are looking into what happened to make sure that next time it doesn't happen. Thank you for taking the time to let me know :) Yes, I have Frisian roots, (about a quarter of me). My Great great grandfather emigrated from Frisland and came to Michigan, USA. The rest of me is English, French, Irish and Scottish. My Mom's family has been in the US since the 1640s. So, American for generations. How about you? — Preceding unsigned comment added by ARipstra (WMF) (talk • contribs) 01:51, 15 January 2015‎

But the email I received on the 15th lacked a link. [[::User:Whatamidoing (WMF)|Whatamidoing (WMF)]] ([[::User talk:Whatamidoing (WMF)|talk]] · [[::Special:Contributions/Whatamidoing (WMF)|contribs]]) pointed me to you as the person to contact. -- Llywrch (talk) 21:02, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Hello Llywrch - Thank you for reaching out. Would you please forward me the email you received that didn't have the link in it? We are trying to figure out why a few people got emails with no links. Also, if you do forward the email, please include the email address you received it at. That way I will be able to send you a specific link to participate in the survey. (My email is aripstra@wikimedia.org) Each participant had a unique link. THank you for taking the time to reach out. This is the first time our little department (design research) has sent out such a big survey, and it is very helpful to hear from everyone with feedback and issues. We keep learning! --ARipstra (WMF) (talk) 23:17, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Henry: Connect with a broader set of people who care about his favorite topics

Unlikely, and he'll probably be disappointed if that is his goal. Wikipedia has a policy that we are not a social network or forum for that sort of thing. It's all about editing the articles. Most interaction between editors is directly or indirectly related to dispute resolution.

Please help kill this social idea. The community generally finds it objectionable when the WMF tries to develop features inspired by the social concept.

Adriana: Become recognized on social media as a subject matter expert

Seems unlikely. Writing an encyclopedia for fun is a very odd, selfless, and low-profile hobby. We have an anti-ownership policy about articles, and editors generally don't need to know squat about a topic. Everything we write is supposed to come from published sources. "Experts" often have trouble because it's hard to avoid writing "what they know", which is a violation of our Original Research policy.

The WMF has floated some dubious ideas based on the ego/credit idea, such as trying to make the names of major contributors more visible on articles. It would be difficult to keep disruptive individuals from popping up there, usernames themselves may be offensive, and anyone trying to get their name to show up would be a threat to the quality of the article.

Wayne: He feels conflicted about the visual editor, and the new people it's brought into the world of editing Wikipedia. Though he' love to have more editors on all wiki projects, he feels like the visual editor is opening the door to people who don't understand the rules about editing, don't care as much, and often do more harm than good.

Well that one is horribly wrong, chuckle. The May_2015_study VisualEditor's_effect_on_newly_registered_editors found that visual editor helped an additional zero% of people make their first edit, increased one week retention of editors by zero%, increased three month retention of editors by zero%, and increased total edit contributions by zero%.

The original rationale for visual editor was to help more people edit (based on the theory that wikitext was an obstacle). The WMF has had a lot of difficultly absorbing the fact that the theory was wrong and that visual editor has utterly failed that goal.

I really wish the WMF could get over this horrible meme that the community doesn't like visual editor because we're afraid of the new people that it (supposedly) will bring in. There are plenty of reasons to wish visual editor were never built, but that definitely isn't one of them. Alsee (talk) 13:22, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

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